Final+Report

** EEVC Final Report ** The Culture Club Wiki will provide a platform for the sharing of cultures at any time. The Club includes students as desired, vital, and contributing partners with others in a learning community. It will provide students, teachers, and community members with the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other.
 * What **

There are many cultural clubs in the Herricks School District, and each club has their own events and activities, but these groups can never find the space or a time where they can all come together and share in one another’s backgrounds and the traditions, activities, and beliefs that go along with it. All of the clubs represent an important culture that students can learn from. Our project can potentially address all of the Key Elements of the EEV. The idea of various culture clubs coming together to share ideas and collaborate as one will be “dramatically enhanced with powerful tools of electronic communication” and its connecting people of all ages and backgrounds with cultural and community resources. The Culture Club will blur the line between work and play. We see our site as a place students will want to visit during their free time to explore other cultures and learn what is happening in their community. It will build caring and self worth. The culture club validates and embraces the differences in our community.
 * Why **

Our project supports a constructivist learning environment. Students are engaging in hands-on learning as the contribute to and explore their wiki and they are provided with sufficient support to help them meet their individual goals. According to Vygotsky, individual development is shaped by social interaction, cultural tools, and activity (Dornisch, 2007). This is what we have created in our culure club project. We have embedded learning in a realistic and relevant learning environment. Students are learning about all of the cultures they are surrounded by in their community and are able to celebrate together. Most of our classes taught at Herricks have to follow the NY state curriculum which does not lend much time to share who we are. The culture club will provide an interactive atmostphere where students can learn about each others backgrounds.

Because the clubs have access to the wiki, it is a student generated site, comprised of pictures, videos, audio commentary, and writing from students to students. Each club will have a place on the wiki to post up-to-date information. Students and the community will also be able to post comments and questions to share and celebrate happenings. The wiki is viewable by all but can only be edited by club leaders and educators.
 * How **

Mike Stein and Liz Spiegel teach at Herricks High School. We visited with several high school clubs to involve them in the concept. We will use these clubs to help us model the idea of “The Culture Club" on our wiki. Adam Dugger is a teacher at Searingtown Elementary. He communicated with the middle and elementary school and surrounding community and to see how to involve them in the project. All TEAM members will work together to accomplish our goals for the Culture Club.
 * Who **

February 2008 Our group was formed and we had our first conversation on community. The idea of sharing cultures came up and this was continued in our [|quicktopic discussion]. We decided to focus on bringing together the various cultures present in our district by targeting the diverse clubs in the high school. The Culture Club wiki was set up and edited to include possible links, pictures, etc.
 * When **

March 2008 We brought our idea of the culture club to several students and club advisors at the high school. They liked our idea and agreed that there is a need to blend the various groups together to learn and unite. Students gave us ideas of events, trips, holidays, traditions, and foods that we might want to incorporate into the project. As a group we discussed ways to assess our project and how to get the other schools in our district involved as well as the surrounding community. We continued to edit the wiki by posting pictures and descriptions we got from the various clubs.

April 2008 We created a promotional video that shows how schools have changed over the decades. There is a need to provide a forum where students can express themselves, learn, and participate. We want to build a diverse and understanding community that is supportive. The video is posted on the homepage of our wiki. Our Culture Club webpage was created in dreamweaver to host our project and share it with others. We link our wiki and post our proposal as well as information about us.

An initial assessment was done by asking several students and administrators: Would you visit a culture club wiki regularly to learn and share information about diverse clubs at Herricks? Why or why not. The feedback we got from administrators was very positive. They saw a need to blend the diverse student body and felt that the idea of an interactive site would be an exciting way to introduce this idea. Students on the other hand were apprehensive about whether there was in fact a need to have a wiki for this purpose. They were also unsure whether they would visit and update the site regularly. This student perspective gave us the motivation to create a promotional video to show how schools have changed over the years and how it is important to learn about the school community you are living and working in.
 * How assessed **

As students start visiting and editing the Culture Club can be assessed through the wiki interactions among the clubs and the school community. We will be able to evaluate the site by looking at the level of activity that is occurring. The amount of editing, commenting, and updating that occurs will be a main indicator of the effectiveness. Our Club will generate a buzz regarding what each club is doing and create an interest in the different backgrounds. We will be developing a sense of cultural understanding and community between the groups directly involved and those viewing the club. We will set up a survey combined with in person interviews to determine if students are learning and benefiting from the culture club. We will ask colleagues, administrators, students, and club advisors to visit the site and take the survey that we have created so that we can have feedback and adapt the wiki accordingly.

Dornisch, M. 2007. Social Cognitive Theory and Constructivism. Retrieved on April 28, 2008 from [|http://myweb.liu.edu/~mdornisc/modules/constructivism.html]